


burn their bodies down

by Scourge of Nemo (Disguise_of_Carnivorism)



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, The Mandalorian (TV)
Genre: Body Horror, Din Djarin Misses Grogu, Din Djarin Needs a Hug, Din Djarin Will Burn The Empire For His Son, Elements of Horror, Gen, Good Parent Din Djarin, Hurt No Comfort, Imperial Grogu Clone Shenanigans, Moff Gideon Is A Creep, Pre-Relationship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-11
Updated: 2021-01-11
Packaged: 2021-03-15 00:35:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,676
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28679739
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Disguise_of_Carnivorism/pseuds/Scourge%20of%20Nemo
Summary: After the Jedi takes Grogu, Din is left lonely and adrift. Searching for meaning, he once more finds his Tribe. But the Way has always led back to Mandalore, and the Empire will come to fear its newest king. Just as soon as he decides what he truly wants.Or: In which Din Djarin struggles to learn how to live, and Moff Gideon will not live to regret cloning Grogu--But now, before the Armorer, face bare, Din realizes: There are things that he might want. He does not know what they are; he has not spent much time wanting for himself. But there is a way beyond the Creed. He might take it, if he dared.
Relationships: Din Djarin & Grogu | Baby Yoda
Comments: 26
Kudos: 170





	burn their bodies down

**Author's Note:**

> Warning for minor character deaths (kindof). See bottom note for spoilery context.
> 
> In general: This is post-season 2 and canon-compliant (to the best of my ability). 
> 
> Huge thanks to Parker ([restlesslikeme](https://archiveofourown.org/users/restlesslikeme/pseuds/restlesslikeme)) for the beta read. A different huge thanks to my wife for being the one who said, "but what if there were clones" and uh. made all this happen. Title cribbed from Rory Powers' phenomenal but unrelated YA novel, wherein bad things also happen to a lot of clones.

He has no child. His covert has scattered to the winds. He gave a member of his clan to the ancient enemy reborn, and he removed his helmet. There is nothing left for Din to seek or protect. 

He cannot remember the last time he did not have the weight of something on his shoulders. Years acting as the Tribe’s sole agent, living off meager resources so he could feed and clothe dozens—what is he, if he is not a provider? It has been his only role for so long.

It feels like he should feel freer, to have this burden lifted from him. But something in him still feels heavy. It’s not just the hilt of the darksaber, though it burns hot at his back. 

After Gideon’s cruiser, Din had painted his beskar’gam a gray so dark it was almost black. Gray, for mourning a lost loved one. Black, for justice.

All he can do now is honor what’s left of his Creed, alone. And hope, perhaps, that someone from the covert comes back for him. To do that, he must be easy to find again. 

So he returns to Nevarro and takes up Greef Karga’s offer to return to the Guild. 

It’s going… okay. He tries not to see the ghosts of his brethren in the city’s shadows. 

“Stop moping,” is the only warning Dune gives him before throwing a ball of crumpled paper at his face. He makes no move to stop it. The paper hits him in the visor. “Wow,” she says, sarcasm high in her voice. There might be worry under it. 

“Hm,” Din says, because there’s nothing else, really. Dune’s drinking; he’s offering his silent companionship. Not much else to do, these days. 

“Look,” Dune says, and now she’s leaning across her desk toward him. Din stiffens, controlling his flinch so it won’t telegraph through his armor. “You want to team up again? Like old times? I can bring you in on my next job. You could be a deputy, even.”

“I don’t collaborate with the state,” Din says coolly. “ _I_ can bring _you_ in on my next job, if you’d like to return to respectability.” 

Dune snorts. It’s a well-worn argument, these past three weeks on Nevarro again. She thinks he doesn’t have enough to keep his mind off the kid, the covert, all of it. Really, he’s quite busy—he just doesn’t tell her what he’s been up to. 

He only revisits the sewers once a week, or so. Twice, maybe. The pile of armor still stood, diminished but not empty. Perhaps the Armorer could not carry it all; perhaps she did not have the time to smelt it. He will not imagine that she came to bad ends. The Armorer, of all his people, has to have escaped. 

So in those trips, he has scavenged all that he can of his people. They will not lie in piles like so many corpses. Now their baskar’gam fill his small home, polished and cleaned, lined up and standing tall. 

“Mando,” Dune stars, then cuts herself off.

“What.” 

“You know none of us will ever tell, right?” 

He doesn’t know how to tell her that’s not the point. He has removed his helmet four times because of the child. All permissible acts, by various interpretations of the Creed. All acts that many would forgive. Acts that Bo-Katan and her ilk would apparently not even question. 

That does not mean that he will forgive himself. But he doesn’t know how to say any of this to her, so instead, he says, “This is between me and my Creed.” 

He plops his latest bounty puck on the table. A Twi’lek face flickers to life in the holo. 

“Seen this guy anywhere?” 

“I’ll let you know if I do,” says Dune, with a sigh. She won’t push anymore today, Din thinks with relief. 

“Hm,” Din says, and stands to leave. 

“Have fun earning money so you can sit in your hovel and do absolutely nothing,” Dune calls behind him.

* * *

The bounty doesn’t take long. It’s a pitiful crew of criminals, and more pitiful pay. There’s only a bounty on one head, so it’s 100% the effort but 25% the reward. Karga just nods at him and leaves him to his thoughts. Some people respect boundaries. 

His ship comm pings as he’s starting to land. A hologram, pre-recorded. Din starts as the Jedi’s face flickers to life, and smashes pause. The Jedi… shouldn’t have his comm. Few did even before the Razor Crest’s destruction, and he’s only used this borrowed junkyard ship for the last week. 

Din shivers. Weird wizardry. 

He restarts the holo. The Jedi’s in brown robes, windswept and sweaty, so different from the black-clad wraithe that sliced through so many dark troopers like nothing. Almost approachable.

“Din Djarin,” the Jedi begins—and presumably Grogu shared the name, but that doesn’t stop another shiver from running through him—“I must apologize for our last meeting. I was a bit shocked to see your youngling—” odd word “—honestly, he looks quite a bit like my old master, who I’d thought was the last of his kind—the old troll had trained Jedi for 800 years, if you can believe him—anyway—” 

The Jedi stops and heaves a breath, as if to gather himself. His next words sound prepared, practiced. “Grogu misses you. He said that Ahsoka Tano refused to train him because his attachment to you was too great. But I can assure you that her position reflects the old Jedi way, not the new order I wish to build. It’s—there’s a bit of a doctrinal disagreement, but Master Tano’s order, well, it took its definitions of attachment a bit further than many other communities of force practitioners throughout history, and honestly, I have my own reasons to question—” The Jedi stops himself again.

“At any rate. If you’d like to visit, Grogu would love to see you. I’ll attach the coordinates to this message.”

There are definitely no coordinates attached to the message. Just as he’s sitting back in confusion, his comm pings again.

“Haha, oops, forgot to… to add the data packet on there. Sorry! Coordinates incoming!” 

Din is too bemused to process the message, for a moment. He hopes the Jedi isn’t this scattered handling laser swords around children. 

Excitement rises in him. He could go to Grogu. Renew their connection. Just… see his face again. Touch his hands. See if the kid has made any progress floating balls and eating frogs. Maybe he could visit… regularly? He’s having a hard time picturing it. He has no models for this long-distance clanship. Or does he? He has built something of the sort, with Dune, with Bo-Katan, with Fett. Shand, maybe. Connections (if not exactly _friends_ ) he could call on for help, who might come. Who _had_ come to his aid, on several occasions. Could he be that for Grogu? 

A traitorous voice in him, small and deep inside, remembers how nice it was to have someone who had seen him, had wanted to _know_ him. Had seen him, and maybe realized what that meant. Had touched his face. 

But then he begins to think. He had given the child what meager home he could. Perhaps it would be better to let the child forget him. To fade from Grogu’s memories, and all the horror and destruction and death in those days they spent together. Let him be… a child. 

The Jedi could keep him safe from all that, in a way that Din hadn’t been able to. The empire had taken the child. Din couldn’t stop them. The Jedi could. Besides—the more people who went to them, the more likely the empire would find them again.

He programs the coordinates into his ship. And then he puts these dreams from his mind.

* * *

He took an empty home on the outskirts of town. Its former inhabitants will not be returning—some of the many who fled, or died, when Gideon razed Nevarro. He’s cleaned the dust and cleared away the rotting food left abandoned on the table. Otherwise, he hasn’t changed much. It’s humble, one-floor, unremarkable. Looks uninhabited, except for the shiny new lock. 

It’s not a _hovel_. It’s _nice_. Certainly nicer than living in the sewers, and at least on par with the Razor Crest. Probably better insulation.

The child’s sling hangs by the door. A pile of baubles from the covert sit in a box on the floor—dolls and bowls and scraps of fabric. Dozens of buy’ce line the walls, set atop their beskar’gam. He tries not to look at them. Sometimes it feels like they are watching him. 

He does not remove his helmet, even here. There is some indefinable fear in him—of what, he doesn’t know. That someone will break in in the dead of night to look upon his face? That he will be caught unarmored, unaware? Perhaps the world beyond his narrowed visor is just too broad, and too frightening to think about. 

Today that fear is good, and it might save his life as it has many times before. The lock is broken. He enters slowly. There’s a new buy’ce among his collection. Attached to a person. Blue and silver beskar’gam, with markings Din doesn’t recognize on the helm. For a moment, hope surges in him. 

The stranger’s first words kill that hope in its tracks. 

“Mand'alor,” they say. 

Din flattens his affect, reigns in his body language. “Did Bo-Katan send you?” he asks.

The stranger scoffs. “Kryze is a pretender, desperate for a throne that she has lost far too many times.”

Well then. “Who are you, then?”

“I am Tarre of Clan Vizsla. That blade belongs to my family.” 

“I knew a Vizsla, once.” 

The Vizsla can’t keep the shock out of their stance: they recoil, off-balance. “There are no other Vizslas. Not alive.” 

“He was alive, last I saw him. Paz?” Nevermind that his buy’ce now hangs from the wall behind them. With any luck, the Vizsla won’t turn around to see it, or won’t recognize their family’s armor. 

Something dark passes through the Vizsla’s voice, even through the modulator. “Paz is a traitor. He stood by while the Saxons sold out our children to the imperials, to use as meat in their wars. He chose neutrality when our people were dying. They do not exist to me.” 

Din has no idea what any of that means. He wishes, not for the first time, that he had not been ripped out of his home not once, but twice. That the Great Purge had not sent his people scattering across the galaxy, that he knew more of the Mandalorians beyond the Creed and the few crumbs Bo-Katan had deigned to throw at him. He settles for, “He was a bit difficult.” 

“You’re making this difficult. Accept my challenge,” the Vizsla snarls. 

Din pauses. Bo-Katan had said something about this. That the darksaber must be won. He’d scoured the holonet for more, but found nothing. Apparently a dangerous amount of nothing. 

“Oh,” the Vizsla says softly. Cruelly. “Oh, you don’t know what you’re holding. You have no idea what you have inherited.” 

“I do not want it,” Din says. “Any of it.”

“Good, because you do not deserve it,” the Mandalorian says. “Pathetic. What clan are you, to hold such power and refuse to use it?” 

“No clan,” Din says. Just a clan of two, split in half. He wants to close his eyes.

“You knew Paz,” the Vizsla says. “You’re one of them, aren’t you? Those backwards cultists.” There’s a sneer in their voice. 

And then the Vizsla is on him.

Din’s ready. A beskad smashes into his pauldrons. It comes again, and he blocks. Again. Again. The Vizsla is panting, already. Din has not moved to touch him. But the Vizsla is fast, and relentless, and Din cannot keep this up. 

“Fight! Draw the darksaber!” the Mandalorian yells. Their fist slams into his gut, in the weak point between his cuirass and his belt. “This is no challenge.”

Din grits out, through teeth clenched against the pain of his mistake. 

“You must _fight me_ , brother, or I cannot,” the Vizsla says. “Are you truly the ruthless bounty hunter they all fear? The man who defied the imperial remnants and destroyed Moff Gideon?” 

“I am he,” Din says, “but I am no king.” 

“I’ll say,” the Vizsla snorts. They sheathe their blade. 

“What?” Din asks. A bit of panic wells up in him, but as always, he eases it from his body and his voice. 

“If you won’t meet my challenge, I’m leaving.” 

Din can’t keep walking around with this thing on him. He doesn’t want it. He can’t carry its weight. “You’re just like her, then. Like Kryze.”

“She abandoned her people to hunt for power. I want the blade to restore them.”

“Then do what she would not, if you hate her so much.” 

Din draws the darksaber. His thumb clicks it on. It sings to life, an odd shadow of the Vizsla’s own beskad—single-edged, wicked, without the broadening tip. A Mandalorian weapon, all over. 

The darksaber shudders. Its edges are ragged in a way they weren’t when Gideon wielded it. It contorts like a thing on fire. It _sings_ to him. 

“You act so calm, but the blade betrays you,” the Vizsla says. 

“No,” Din says, irrationally. And he fights.

* * *

Din doesn’t know what happened. He had planned to make a few swings, block a few attacks, then drop his guard and leave himself open. Take a graceful fall. But the Vizsla kept coming, and he thought of Grogu. For a moment it was as if he was fighting for the child again, and not himself. 

He really doesn’t understand how he ended up here, with the forsaken blade at Vizsla’s throat.

Now they’re next to each other on the floor. Din stares at his hands in resigned confusion. Vizsla lies on their back, panting.

“I will not challenge you again,” Vizsla says. “But I can’t promise that others will not come for you.”

“Please, just take the thing.” Din can’t keep the exasperation out of his voice.  
Apparently making himself easy to find for the Tribe meant easy to find for others, too. _Fuck_.

“It is yours, Mand'alor, You ought to use it.” 

“But—” Din says, holding out the hilt. The saber had felt as unwieldy and uncomfortable as the jetpack had, in Din’s first days of using it. He did not wield it elegantly. He could only just barely hear its song. But Vizsla fought like Bo-Katan and her trio—too much ego in their ruthlessness. All too easy to push back.

Vizsla pushes the darksaber away and claps Din on the shoulder. “You couldn’t throw a duel if you tried. You’re built for survival,” they say, standing. It’s delivered like an insult, though the words are complimentary. “When you return to Mandalore, I will follow.” 

Then, Vizsla turns to Din’s wall of beskar’gam. “They’re not far from here, now, you know,” they say. “Your Children of the Watch.” 

Din’s mouth suddenly feels dry. “Where?” Real hope, now, rising thick in his throat.

“I’ll send you the coordinates. We like to keep an eye on the dissidents, and they’re not as hidden as they think to people who have the means to look. But you should think about it—about reclaiming Mandalore. Many would join you, behind me.” 

“What is there even left to be king of?” Din asks, as Vizsla’s halfway out the door. 

“Why don’t you go find out?” Vizsla asks.

* * *

Din has two new coordinates programmed into his borrowed junkyard ship. One, the supposed location of his covert, sent to him by Vizsla. A tiny planet, barely even in the Outer Rim. Two, Mandalore. He will not think of the third coordinates, sent with the Jedi’s holo.

He won’t go to Mandalore. He can’t. The planet is cursed. Everyone knows it. Except Bo-Katan. And now, Vizsla. He didn’t know much about either clan, but he did know they were old names. Families with legacies. 

What reason would they have to lie? Just futile optimism, that they could reclaim a ruined birthright? Or was there something to their obsession? 

He remembers fleeing Mandalore, decades ago. The smell of cities burning, and the heaviness of plasma in the air, and the taste of ash in his mouth. The terror, and the screaming, and the Empire’s relentless bombardment from the sky. 

Mandalore would not bend, and so the Empire had turned its spires to glass and soot.

What _could_ be left, after that? 

Din does not like to think of the homes he has lost—first his home planet, then, as a foundling, Mandalore. The memories make him feel small, and alone, and helpless. 

He had never questioned the curse, just as he had never questioned the Way. 

Now, he owes something to his Tribe. They had revealed themself for the child’s sake. They fled across the stars, armorless, alone. Decades of survival, undone in a day. 

And in thanks, he couldn’t even fulfill the covenant he’d sworn to them. The debt he owed to the Tribe that saved him when he was a child—he could not even make the barest of payments. 

He wonders what happened to those whose armor now lined his home. It had lain in the sewers, bloodless—as if abandoned without a fight. Had they forsaken the Creed for their own survival? Were they welcomed back with open arms, despite their sins, for the survival of clan and family comes before all else? Or had they abandoned the Tribe in its time of need, then been banished in shame? 

He owes them—he owes them the darksaber. He owes them his armor. He owes them his life. So he would find them, and he would give everything to them.

Din begins taking down the beskar’gam from his wall, piece by piece.

* * *

Er’Kit is a bastard of a planet, gutted by slavers during the Clone Wars and left with near-nothing.

It does not take so long to find the Tribe, once he arrives. He understands now why he never found them before, though: There is no one else here to spot them and carry word out. This planet is only red sand, and abandoned townships, and sparse remnants of a barren civilization. 

The covert looks smaller, and dirtier, and tired. So many helmets are missing. He doesn’t know if they are dead, or lost, or banished for abandoning their armor and bearing their faces as the covert fell. But he has brought their beskar’gam, in the wild hope that he can help restore some to honor. 

The Armorer’s forge is different, but the same. Nestled in the ruins of an ancient building, she’s found another powerful jet engine. She stands before him in her ornate beskar’gam, wrapped in furs, and it is as if nothing has changed.

He falls to his knees before her, unclipping the darksaber from his belt. He tosses it on the floor before him. 

“What’s this?” she asks, voice hard.

Din unlocks his helmet. “I have not kept our Creed.” Before he can spend any more time paralyzed by his thoughts, he tears it off his head and offers it to her.

He stares at the floor, eyes hot. He doesn’t want to imagine what he looks like—he can barely picture it, for how infrequently he’s looked in the mirror. He must look terrified. Lost. Small. 

“This is _not_ the way,” says the Armorer. She does not move, does not touch the darksaber or the helmet. 

“I am no longer a Mandalorian,” he says. “I have not followed the Creed.” 

“How have you broken the Creed, foundling? Have you let your child fall into the hands of our enemies?” 

“The child is with the Jedi, as you asked. Safe.”

“Then you have guarded your clan with honor. I see no violation of our Creed.”

“I removed my helmet. Several times. Once, out of necessity, to live. Again, out of deceit, to impersonate an imperial. Third, out of necessity, to protect my clan. And again, out of selfishness, so that the child would remember my face.” 

“The Creed will have you back again, if you choose to walk the way of the Mandalorian once again. We have welcomed those who fled Nevarro. We would welcome you, who acted with more honor than them.” The Armorer pauses. “But that is only if you wish it. Do you _want_ to follow this Creed, Din Djarin, of Clan Mudhorn?” 

Din’s breath shudders out of him. Of course he does, he wants to say. He is nothing without clan, without the Creed, without the child. These last few weeks he has been only a bounty hunter, with no greater purpose. It is horrible, and empty, and lonely all over again. 

Before the child he had been lonely, but he had still had the Tribe. Even though none there truly knew him, he had them, and they had him. He cared for them and provided for them, though he knew few of them by name. He may have lost the child to the sorcerer, but he could have the Tribe again. 

But now, before the Armorer, face bare, he realizes: There are things that he might want. He does not know what they are; he has not spent much time wanting for himself. But there is a way beyond the Creed. He might take it, if he dared. 

“You hesitate,” says the Armorer.

“I… do not know,” he says, at last. 

“You do not want the blade, either?”

“I do not.” 

“Why not? It would bring great honor to the Tribe, for one of our own to wield an object of such might.” 

“Won’t you take it from me? I am nothing, no one. Just a clan of one, now,” he says. 

“I will not fight you for something that belongs in your hands.”

Din nearly scoffs, but some instinct of self-preservation keeps him in check. “You’re a leader. You deserve to rule.” 

“No one _deserves_ to rule. One may only fight to rule and struggle to become one worth following.” 

“There is nothing to rule,” Din says. “Our people are scattered. There’s—” he thinks of the disgust in Bo-Katan’s voice, towards him, towards Fett. “There’s so much anger between us. We are broken apart. Mandalore is cursed.”

“Yes,” says the Armorer. “But that does not mean it is lost forever.” 

“I—” Din says.

“Do not make this decision lightly,” says the Armorer. She gently pushes his helmet down to him. “You have broken our Creed once. Do not swear back into it unless you mean to keep it. You were borne of the Tribe, and you shall die in it, no matter which Creed you take. All will know that we created you.” 

“What would you have me do?” 

“You must decide that for yourself, foundling.” 

Din hears the dismissal in her voice. He can’t bring himself to move for long moments. The forge burns, and sweat drips down the back of his neck, and he has never felt more vulnerable. But at last, he returns his buy’ce; he locks it in place, still kneeling. Then, he replaces the darksaber behind his back. 

“You could start by learning to wield that blade,” the Armorer says. “It does not deserve to be owned by someone who will not use it.” 

“I’ll… I’ll come back for the Tribe, whatever I choose,” Din says. It is all he can say. 

When Din returns to his ship he has to take a moment to sit, stunned and silent. And then his comms ping. 

“Dune.”

Her face flickers before him. “Moff Gideon has escaped New Republic custody. They’ve located him on Mandalore. I just… I thought you should know.”

Din heaves a heavy sigh and hangs up on her. 

He doesn’t have time to think about what he _wants_ or whether he feels _different_. There is only the current crisis. It’s a nice change, from the past few days. 

So he unloads the beskar’gam from his ship. He feels too raw, too unsettled, to face the Armorer again. So he sets it outside her forge as an offering. Perhaps the gift will say something that he cannot.

And then he leaves.

* * *

“Come with me to Mandalore,” Din says.

“What?” Dune nearly topples out of her chair. 

“You told me to stop moping. So. I’m going to Mandalore. I’m going to kill Moff Gideon.” 

“We should let the New Republic handle it, really. It’s their jurisdiction. And you don’t want to see that, Mando. It’s—have you ever been on a planet after the Empire?”

He doesn’t say anything.

“What am I saying. Of course you have.” Dune throws her hands up in the air. 

“I’m happy to go alone. I’ll be borrowing one of your ships,” Din says. 

“No, you will not be going to your bombed-out home planet without me. I’ll make this a—an official New Republic venture. Get it signed by the General. She already has people on the way. We need to collaborate with them, or—”

“No. This is off the books. Just a bounty hunter and a former rebel. On a trip together. To murder an old friend.” 

“Sounds above-board.” 

“The Republic can only fail to execute Gideon so many times before it starts to get suspicious,” Din says. 

“I know, we _know_. We’re looking for the mole already.” Dune groans, head in her hands. “We don’t have to hurry. He escaped, what, two days ago? And he’s _trapped_. He can’t do anything from Mandalore. There’s no resources, no trade—the Empire isn’t backing him anymore. He’s hiding, he must be desperate—what’s he going to do? Spit on us?” 

“That’s what you thought when you executed him last time. But he came back strong. And his friends are already coming for him.” 

“So, what?” 

“So we better hurry.”

* * *

Din doesn’t know what he expected. He hadn’t allowed himself to imagine it. He had last seen Mandalore from the sky, while the whole planet was wreathed in black smoke and smothered in the Empire’s warships. 

Now, from the atmosphere, parts of it look… normal. His scans picked up odd features—surely the burned-out remnants of cities razed by the Imperials. But it also found still-standing buildings, and animals, and plantlife pricking through the ravaged landscape. Habitable, even, with some terraforming.

Unfortunately, there are also facilities. Lots and lots of facilities. With life-forms in them. 

“What the fuck,” Dune says. “No one should be down there.” 

Din shrugs, and tries not to let his unease out in his voice. Gideon came here for a reason. Din is increasingly certain that he’d rather _not_ know what that reason is. 

New Republic ships have already started gathering, forming a blockade against any imperial remnants that attempt to land. 

Dune transmits her credentials, bluffs her way through—“You’re not supposed to be here!” “That’s above your security clearance, commander” and, aside, at Din “you’re going to get me _so_ fired”—and clears their path. 

They drop from the atmosphere into something that looks like a once-grand capital. The dome-covered city was spared, but it sits in a field of vitrified sand that stretches as far as the eye can see. 

“Well,” says Dune, her usual bravado dimmed, “I guess this is us.” 

It’s disturbingly easy to enter the capital, and even more disturbing to look around when they get there. The towering spires are fraught with scorchmarks and blown-out windows. The place echoes. 

The echoes seem to speak, but in a language that Din barely knows. The detritus in the streets shows fragments of lives, lost. 

Din shivers. People lived here. This was—a civilization. Hundreds of clans. Tribes among tribes. Something he couldn’t even have imagined, hopping from planet to planet in hiding along the outer rim. 

And there are Imperial right-of-ways settled right in among the abandoned Mandalorian streets. A few years old, at most. 

“Let’s see where these go,” Dune whispers.

The capital seems mostly abandoned, despite all the recent infrastructure. It’s not long before all their creeping and tiptoeing takes them to a new facility, oddly rounded amidst the simple, squared Mandalorian architecture. It’s white, and pristine, and empty in a way that the rest of the grand capital is not. 

The first thing Din sees when they get inside is pods. Endless lines of them, clear glass circling conveyor belts. There’s something—humanoid in them.

Din feels sick, when he realizes. This is the work of years, if not decades. He remembers what Bo-Katan had said to Fett, disgust in her tone. _I’ve heard your voice a thousand times_. Mandalorian genes, taken and replicated to become unthinking tools of the Empire. He hadn’t understood the horror of it, then—Fett was his own man, clearly. But these creatures, grown for the Empire’s use to age, then to die in its name—they would know nothing of themselves. 

And then Moff Gideon’s voice blares to life over the loudspeakers. 

“Welcome to my humble project, Mandalorian,” he says. Dune and Din both jolt in surprise. “What, you thought I wouldn’t notice you entering my city?”

“How’d you like the child back? I know you miss it.” Gideon continues. “I could make you a new one, if you’re so inclined. They aren’t as powerful as I’d like, yet. Dr. Pershing didn’t get me _quite_ enough material to master the process. I think I’ll let them… hmm… percolate a bit longer. Perhaps later then, hm?” 

Dune grabs his arm and squeezes.

But Gideon isn’t done. “And it wouldn’t take much to find a few more samples, I think. After all, the Empire has killed _thousands_ of Jedi. What’s one more, and his infant padawan? We will hunt them across the galaxy.”

The child is gone. The child is safe. The child will not become fodder for this atrocity. Din tries to repeat it to himself, but fear grips his heart. Does he know, really, that the Jedi can keep the child safe? That the child will not be fleeing this for his entire life, for decades if not centuries after Din’s own death? 800 years, the Jedi had said. A millennium of horror _could not_ be the only thing awaiting his child.

Din knows, then, what he has to do. “You know how to blow something like this up?” Din asks Dune subvocally, voice a bit wild. 

“Obviously.” 

“Then do it. Do whatever you have to do. All of this—the Empire can’t get to these.” 

“But the city, it’ll damage—”

“Do it. I don’t care what it costs.” Din’s voice snaps in the air. It’s an order, in a way nothing he’s said to her ever has been. 

“Right, boss,” Dune says, and gives him a salute. 

“Come on, Mandalorian,” Gideon taunts. “Don’t ruin a happy reunion! Come say hello. I’m waiting in the throne room.” 

“That’s obviously a trap,” Dune whispers.

“Don’t care,” Din says, and he’s already running.

It takes no time to follow the facility’s electrical connections back through Mandalore’s capital, through a once-grand park that’s mostly charred brush and broken statues, across a bridge and into a husk of the former seat of the Mandalorian government. The once-grand windows gape empty, full of jagged remnants of glass. 

Din thinks of the Armorer and his scattered covert. He was always apart—first a refugee, then a foundling, then a refugee again. He sees a little, but he cannot feel loss on the scale of a planet.

He does not understand exactly what Gideon and men like him have destroyed here. He can see the scars of it, how they ripped millions from their homes, and scattered them across the stars. How Gideon would turn a child into a weapon thousands of times over, to do the same again in the name of a dead empire. 

Even though he cannot truly comprehend this absence, the sight of the ravaged civilization lights a new ache in his chest. Somehow, it matches all those that he already carries.

And Gideon is inside, as good as promised. He sits on the throne of the wreckage he has wrought.

He’s rough. They’d turned him in more or less good as new, but he has fared poorly, either in custody or escape. Blood crusts his head. His already-thin form seems emaciated, and without his battle armor he looks almost frail. 

Yet, he drapes himself over the Mandalorian throne as if he belongs there. In some ways, he has held it longer than most. 

“Where is it?” Din demands.

“Where’s… what?” Gideon’s tone is blithe as always.

“Whatever you—his blood. His genes. Whatever you took from him.” 

“Oh, I’m sure it’ll all be blown up when your friend is done down there.” Gideon’s holding some sort of handheld surveillance device. There’s—something around him, small, in the shadows of the throne.

Din doesn’t believe that for a second. He’s sure the Empire has file after file on the child, records of his name and face and origin and genome and blood. But how could he possibly find it? Gideon has already proven himself uniquely resistant to questioning. 

Whatever. Din will _shake_ it out of him, if he needs to.

“I had hoped to wait this out, until my friends came,” Gideon continued. “But—ah, I suppose not. The New Republic does move _quickly_ these days. My poor luck.” 

“I will keep him from you, in all his forms, until my dying breath,” Din says. “You will not have even a _scrap_ of him.” There’s no reason to hold back; Gideon already knows how much the child means to him, after last time. 

Din realizes, suddenly, that he means every word. Some part of him has already decided that when this is over, he will return to the child, and they will not part again.

But first, Din has to make it safe. Din is panting, though he’s barely moved.

Gideon sighs. Din takes a threatening step forward. Out of the corner of his eyes, he sees: Whatever’s huddled at the base of the throne, it’s moving.

And then Din realizes. He can’t keep in his gasp of horror.

Gideon looks at his feet. “Oh, that? You wouldn’t kill your son, would you? It’s one thing, to ask your friend to do it...” 

That’s the only warning Din has before something squeezes the air from his chest and flings him into the ceiling. He lands with a thunk, so hard that the stone ceiling shatters and crumbles. It’s worse than anything he’s ever felt, even the brief sting of carbonite. His limbs are frozen, immobile. He’s only ever been on the other side of this—violence.

 _The Force_. This is what’s inside the Jedi. Inside _Grogu_.

And then Din is falling. 

He lands face first before the throne. Lifts his head, just a few inches, and then he sees—a humanoid form, larger than Grogu, but still half the size of a human child. Green-tinged. Wilting, exhausted from its brief use of the force.

Gideon kicks it with his boot. “Useless. I did mention they were a bit... _underbaked_ , yes?” He pulls a blaster from his belt, and he shoots it.

“No!” 

Gideon laughs.

The clone is a monstrosity. Din would have had to kill it himself. Grogu would never want to be used like that. But the child is _still in it_. 

Din fights to push himself up. A crack runs through the glass of his visor. The HUD display flickers. Every bone in his body hurts. He feels as if something has—has grabbed him, and wrung him out. The beskar didn’t even matter; the Force had reached through the beskar, and wrapped it tight around him. 

Gideon is within Din’s reach, now. He could run Gideon through with his spear. He could choke him to death. Gideon trains the blaster on him, but Din can see the tremor in his hands. There’s a wicked smile on his face. It’s the smug grin of a man who knows that someone else will forever jump at shadows, because of his deeds. _I couldn’t destroy the galaxy or the child,_ Gideon’s eyes say, _but I will burn the one who dared defy me._ The look of a man ready to die happy. 

And that’s good, because Din is the man ready to kill him. 

“Dream of us, Din Djarin,” Gideon says, still smiling, gesturing to the dead clone at the feet of the Mandalorian throne.

The darksaber means something, here. It wants to claim this victory, before this throne. This is its seat, and its home, and its power. 

For the first time, its desires align with Din’s.

So, with little pomp, Din grabs Gideon by the collar and throws him to his knees. Gideon cries out. And there, before the throne of the Mand'alor, Din takes what will become known as his first act as king.

The darksaber sings. 

Gideon’s head rolls across the floor. Blood spatters the throne. Behind him, the air roars as the clone facility explodes. 

Gideon’s corpse slumps to the ground. 

Din steps past it. He collapses in front of the clone’s body. No pulse—dead, absolutely, and maybe never resembling anything truly alive. Its form seems oddly twisted, brittle; there are shades of veins in the wrong places, and shadows of organs visible through its pale-green skin. There is no evidence, in this broken form, of the power that it holds. 

Din’s hands shake. He unlocks his helmet, lifts it off, and sets it aside. He drops his forehead to the child’s. The skin feels wrong—papery, dry. It smells like bacta.

He feels numb. Exhausted. Full of terror and horror.

Din does not know how long he stays there. But eventually, he stands, cradling the child in one arm and the helmet in the other. Every movement is agony, but he makes his way back to the park. Digs out a small grave, scooping earth handful by handful. Sets the child in it. Buries him, bit by bit.

As Din kneels before the grave of one of his thousands of children, he does not feel the ghost of Mandalore, the home that so many left. He does not feel it, and he barely remembers. But he wants to. He wants to live here, and walk amongst a tribe, and build a clan. He wants to turn the echoes and the ruins back into life, until there is no trace of the things that Gideon has done here. 

He wants to share his name willingly, instead of hearing men like Gideon take it from him. He wants those he loves to know his face. He wants to feel the child’s hand on his again. Its real hand, not this strange imitation. 

Perhaps he has gotten greedy, now that he has started thinking about wanting things. 

He hopes that this odd, grotesque project of Gideon’s was contained here, to Mandalore. But he fears that it was not. 

Well. Then he’ll spend the rest of his life seeking these clones, to deliver them from the Empire’s hands any way he can.

He knows what he wants to protect, now. He will start with the Tribe. And then those who would be enemies of the Tribe—he will turn them into allies, one by one, Vizsla first. They will become his right hand, and he will lead them to crush the remnants of the empire that incubates evils that are such a desecration of kith and kin. Mandalore must stay neutral and scattered no longer. The Mand’alor will not allow it.

But first he will rebuild Clan Mudhorn. He will renew his vows to the child. One will once again become two. And he will show his face again. Each time it will be by his choice, entirely. 

Din stands bare-faced, and he goes to bring his people home.

**Author's Note:**

> Warnings: Gideon is (non-graphically) beheaded. He shoots a Grogu clone. Cara Dune blows up a facility of Grogu clones off-screen, with Din's blessing.
> 
> Thanks for reading this weird nightmare story. Hope you enjoyed. 
> 
> You can find me at [neverfeedthesarcophagi](https://neverfeedthesarcophagi.tumblr.com/) on Tumblr. I'm working on a Bobadin "modern bounty hunter reality TV rivals romcom" as the extremely logical follow-up to this absolute horrorshow.


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